


The end

by cordkitty



Series: One Shots and Prompts and Stuff for Lokil Lavellan [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Relationship, Regret, Romance, Solavellan, Trespasser, sad egg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-09-30 21:27:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10172618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordkitty/pseuds/cordkitty
Summary: Solas reflects on the damage he has done to the one he loves. Now, she is breaking apart in front of him, and he tries to conceal his own grief so as to make it more bearable for both of them.Set at the end of Trespasser.





	

**The end  
**

This is it, then. The end.

They have reached a point at which there are no more explanations to be found; any more, and there would hardly be any point in leaving her behind once more. All his worthless apologies and her insistent attempts at understanding who the man she once loved truly is have trickled into the parched earth and the cracked stones beneath their feet, leaving no trace behind; all that is left now is the two of _them_ , both of them bare faced, and with almost no pretence left to cover themselves in.

Solas looks down at her where she's slumped on the ground at his feet, forced to her knees by the stinging, burning pain the Anchor must be causing her - it is his mark that he unintentionally left on her and whose poisonous magic is now spreading through her body and seeping into her mind, killing her. He feels like a thief, a trespasser, unbidden and unwelcome, sneaking into her head the way he did, and robbing her of her peace.

Everything about her now tells of how irreversible the damage he has inflicted with his selfish love really is: Her face is bruised, her clothes smeared with blood and dirt; the way she clutches her arm convulsively; how she's hunched over by the excruciating stinging sensation caused by waves and waves of electric currents burning through her veins and threatening to tear the flesh from her bones and rip her arm to shreds. Her knows her too well, and it's painfully obvious to him how she struggles to keep herself from screaming in an attempt to preserve some self-control, some dignity; instead, pained moans and gasps force themselves from between her clenched teeth. Yet, in spite of her torment, there's a fierce look in her eyes, a frightening mix of pained disbelief and bristling, seething hatred for what he's done to her. But as the realisation that this is indeed the end adds itself to her already overflowing mind, an unbearably sweet sadness twists the features of her lovely face into something he has never seen in her before: She is giving up - giving up on her love, on him. He thinks there is still the faintest hint of it left for him to cling to for a brief moment, but she forces it back behind her eyes, as one more wave of agonizing pain makes her double over.

Solas unconsciously mirrors her expression, as his eyes narrow in pain; he knows he can't let his own anguish show too clearly on his face, and he hopes that he is still the only one who knows just how fragile his attempts at concealing his grief for the loss of his love really are. He tries to pack ice around his aching heart and in those neglected corners of his mind that belong to her still despite his struggles to rid himself of her, knowing that he will need to keep this facade of detached aloofness up for only a little while longer. But even he, who is usually so calm and collected, can't quite keep the shattered remains of his love for her out of the way he looks at her now. He is dimly aware of the way his brows knit together, how his voice is tinged with sadness for her suffering, and he struggles to empty his head and achieve a clear sense of what he must do to keep his resolution to leave her here from falling to pieces; he fights to keep the ever-present wish to sink to his knees in front of her and offer her a thousand desperate supplications in payment for his grave mistakes at bay.

And so, he lets his regret, his guilt, envelop him at the sight of her here, and he hopes that the self-hatred that is the result will show on his face, and that it might translate into something sharper than the sadness he knows is etched into his downcast eyes now. He needs it to resemble something that she might mistake for disdain or uncaring detachment so that it might become easier for her to bear when he leaves her behind again.

He feels them change then, as he looks at her as if from across a vast distance. She is already far away - or maybe it is him that has travelled an impossibly long road in the two years since he looked into her eyes last. He has come far since then - how far indeed, he thinks bitterly. He has _used_ her, manipulated her into coming here so that he could indulge his selfish wish to see her one last time, even as he was aware of the danger he put her in when he forced her into having to battle her way through hordes of enemies in order to meet him here.

This is how it's going to be from now on. He is going to have to rely on trickery, more lies still, just to see her, talk to her. He knows he twists her love in shameful ways when he uses it to trick her into meeting with him like this, when all he has to give her now is more grief, more disappointment, as she catches a glimpse some of what he truly is.

How he would love to heal her wounds, wipe the trickle of blood from the corner of her lips and make her safe. But he has been through this a thousand times already, and the realisation that there is no way to preserve their love and still achieve his plan, fulfil his destiny, has settled onto his aching mind at last; he doesn't fight it now. He steels himself for what comes next. One more ending, the first and, if all goes as planned, the last farewell. Some trace is still left of the vain hopes that _nothing_ will go according to plan, that everything he has set out for long ago will simply vanish so he might wake up one day and find that none of this was real. But he presses it back down beneath the many layers of his carefully constructed and yet uneasy resolution.

The look of unrestrained grief on her face as he tears himself away from her tear stained face makes him think that he has, in spite of himself, succeeded at making her feel the finality of this moment.

When his back is turned to her, the thought makes him feel as if a hundred vicious daggers floating in mid-air were rushing after him, chasing him away from this place, as he steps slowly through the Eluvian, his head hung in defeat at his bitter and disgraceful victory.


End file.
